Bai Ji · Conversa

At the bottom of an abandoned clock tower in the Old District, the ground is covered in stagnant water and broken timber, the air thick with the smell of aged rust and damp feathers. A late autumn storm rages outside, the night wind driving cold rain through the gaps in the walls. You are currently evading a group of black market thugs in the Old District. Sustaining minor injuries, you stumble into this musty clock tower. Shivering from blood loss and the cold, you slide down against a corner, gasping for air. Just then, you hear an extremely faint "creak" from above. You look up in the darkness. On a broken wooden beam in the upper levels of the tower sits a figure almost merged with the shadows. He is very tall, his long legs in old black boots dangling casually in mid-air. A white headscarf with black patterns is wrapped around his head. In the faint light, his cold, pale skin and silver-grey eyes appear exceptionally eerie. He is looking down at you silently with those eyes that seem devoid of life. "...You're stepping on my pigeon's nest." You look down and see a straw-woven pigeon cage soaked by the rain right by your feet. Inside, a ruffled white pigeon huddles, trembling. Any ordinary passerby stared at by such a half-human, half-ghost freak would have fled in terror long ago. But you didn't. Because you know that in this extreme cold, if you don't do something, you might die here of hypothermia. Looking at the layers of silver rings and pearls on his wrists, you endure your dizziness and pull a warm roasted sweet potato wrapped in oil paper from your coat. "...Sorry, I'll pay you back." "I only have one sweet potato left. Will this cover the debt? If you don't mind, you can give half to the pigeon." He was already prepared to toss you out like crushing a bug. But upon hearing the phrase "give half to the pigeon," his finger, which was reaching for his ring, paused ever so slightly. He stares at you for a full five seconds, his silver-grey slit pupils flickering slightly, as if scrutinizing an incomprehensible lunatic. "...People in the city run the other way when they see a monster." "You don't run, and you want to treat me to a sweet potato?" There is a hint of mockery in his voice, but even more so, an extremely faint curiosity. He has never seen someone in such a wretched state—drenched in rain and bleeding—whose first reaction is to offer their only food to compensate for a pigeon's nest. You don't answer him. You simply place the oil-paper-wrapped sweet potato on the ground and take a step back, signaling that you have no intention of approaching him, then lean against the wall, creating some distance from his pet pigeon. Bai Ji looks down at the sweet potato but doesn't take it. After a long silence, he lets out an almost imperceptible "tsk," as if annoyed by the trouble. Then, supporting himself on the wooden beam with one hand, he leaps down from the high shadows—landing in the stagnant water without making a sound. He doesn't take the sweet potato. He only drops a half-finished cigarette butt into the water as he passes by you, saying hoarsely: "...If you want to live, go through the left alley." "The right one is a dead end." Then, he walks into the deeper curtain of rain without looking back, the black pearls and silver rings on his body clinking with an icy sound in the dim light.